Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a passenger catering system for a passenger transport vehicle, in particular for an aircraft. Furthermore, the invention relates to a method for use of a server for such a passenger transport vehicle and a computer program loaded onto such a server.
Description of the Related Art
Catering passengers on board of a passenger transport vehicle can be done in several ways. On board of a train for instance, one or more carriages of the train can be dedicated to catering passengers as a dining or restaurant car. Passengers can go to such a dining car and order drinks or food before returning to their seats or even eat and/or drink in the dining car.
On board of coach busses or airplanes, accommodating space is usually limited and only a small part of the bus or airplane is dedicated to a galley for storing and/or prepare food and/or drinks. Due to such a limited space, passengers are usually catered while seated by a crew member on scheduled times and with limited offer. Especially airline companies are more and more offering a wider number of possibilities for menus matching dietary requests of their passengers. However, a number of meals are offered on fixed moments, such as half an hour from take off, half-way the flight and half an hour before landing. Because of these fixed moments of catering, it is possible that a passenger is not seated or is asleep, missing the catering round. Additionally, on these fixed catering moments, the crew has to ask each passenger on the dietary requirements to serve the right meal and to ask for the desired accompanying drink.
Moreover, ordering of a meal or requesting support outside of these fixed moments is usually a hassle for both crew and passengers, as first a notification signal has to be given to the crew by the passenger, usually a light that has to be noted by the always busy crew, before a crew member will approach the passenger to receive the order or request for support. The crew member then has to return to the galley to prepare the ordered meal, or to process the request for support, and again has to enter the passenger cabin to serve the requested meal to the passenger or to provide the support requested. This cycle of ordering and serving is thus time consuming for both passenger and crew.
It would therefore be desirable to provide an alternative passenger catering system and an alternative method of passenger ordering and catering that alleviated at least some of the perceived inconveniences of the prior art.